The Week’s Most Popular Posts: March 28 – April 1, 2016

This post originally appeared on Panels, which is now Book Riot Comics

Let’s take a look back at this week’s most popular posts here on Panels:

I feel the need to preface this list by saying that making a “best of” list is always a difficult task. There’s the lingering questions of whether it should be subjective or objective? Should it include obvious choices? Is it a matter of craft or substance? The list goes on. In any event, here is MY list of the top 5 best graphic novels from DC.

When I first started doing comics, I had a really hard time keeping my characters consistent. My characters would slowly evolve as I drew. By the time I got to the last page, they would look completely different from how they were on the first page. It drove me crazy.

Years of seeing myself in two specific media roles—that of the supportive Gay Best Friend with no interior story worth telling or the tragic corpse dangling on the reel as awards bait—conditioned me to see my Best Case Scenario as “dying as a secondary figure, but nobly and by choice.”

“Choice.”

I can’t find many heroes for me, so I turn to comics: the world of immortal heroes, both in power set and market value. Every month, I scour solicits for roles—superpowered or otherwise—that I might get to occupy.

So that’s Rebirth. A lot of these titles are out in June while others come out in the fall. Generally, it was hard to be excited for anything since it feels like the rug is being pulled from under me…again. My feelings regarding the individual titles range from either being uninterested in a character, not digging an artist or a writer on a particular book or the twice monthly concept killing any love I would have had because monthly is already a struggle financially (and time wise). Yes, the price reduction to $2.99 is a thing but for those twice a month books, you’re just paying more for essentially one title. Twice a month also worries me in regards to quality/consistency of the books, and the diversity behind, and on the page as gone down a bit as well.

Like many, I went to see Batman v. Superman over the weekend with a little bit of trepidation. I hadn’t been a fan of Man of Steel and the trailers had been less than reassuring. But I wanted to give the film a fair shot. I came away with some complicated feelings on the movie. I liked aspects of it: Bat-fleck, Wonder Woman, Alfred. I even liked Jesse Eisenberg’s take on Lex Luthor, even if it’s not really my ideal version of the Businessman-turned-Mad Scientist. That said, I left the theater with some questions. Not really burning questions, but a few things that nagged at the edges of my mind while watching the film.

While Batman and Superman are trying to blow each other up at the box office, over on the small screen Supergirl and the Flash are engaging in one of my all-time favorite comics tropes: the Superhero Team Up! I don’t like seeing superheroes fight. In fact, I don’t even like the classic “who would win in a fight” question. I much prefer the “if you combined these two characters and their powers, what awesome thing could they do” question. (The answer is always Fastball Special.)

Anyway! Supergirl and the Flash teamed up for some epic cross-network crime fighting. And these are the BEST THINGS that happened.